Now it's possible to have some kind of protocell with some form of metabolism without any genetic heredity. It's possible in principle. Is it alive? - Nick Lane

They [bacteria] haven't used it [their more complex metabolism]... to give rise to more complex morphologies beyond the kind of stromatolite type structures, beyond s. That seems to be a limit. Some multicellularity, some degree of differentiation and complexity, but nothing... to compare with the flea.

The only way that you can really get a selfish replicator to be unselfish is to put it in a bag with a bunch of other selfish replicators, and then they're more or less obliged to cooperate.

I'm... interested in the principles of what governs the emergence of life on the planet, with a certain set of resources. Can we understand it? We'll never know what happened, so we'll never know how life started on earth. ...[I]f those principles are enormously difficult, if it turns out that it's a freak statistical accident, then there's little point in studying it and we will gain... very little. If, on the other hand, those principles are reasonable, intelligible, that we can study them in the lab and demonstrate that the steps that we propose are plausible and... we can demonstrate it, then I think that's as close to understanding the origin of life [as] we can get. ...[I]f those principles are generalizable, then as a scientist, that's... a pleasing thing. I'm not sure there's any more that's more pleasing to me, personally as a scientist.